


Red Wine and War Paint

by Inkmage (Fallowsthorn)



Category: Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Bloodplay, Bondage, Circuit Sex, Dubious Consent, M/M, Porn, Unsafe Sex, poor communication kills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 20:03:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallowsthorn/pseuds/Inkmage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clu is absolutely fascinated by the way the User body works and especially by blood. So when a User is captured, he indulges in his fantasy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Wine and War Paint

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt on the Tron Kink Meme: http://tronkinkmeme.livejournal.com/4397.html?thread=3824685#t3824685
> 
> There is so much that is fucked-up in this story. Hope you enjoy.

The first thing Clu remembers is a pulse.   
  
Not his own; he doesn't have a heart to beat, doesn't have blood to rush through his veins. But his very first cached memory is of Flynn helping him up from the Outlands floor, and clutching at his User's wrist. Clu remembers, even now, the steady, sure pound of blood beneath his thumb.   
  
It takes him a long time to find that memory again. It was buried almost immediately under an onrush of information and learning. He was young. But now he remembers, and wonders if he... if this is really as unnatural as Flynn says, since it was there from the start. 

* * *

Clu forgot about his User's pulse until he was out patrolling the Grid with Tron, and had to catch the other's arm to keep him from overbalancing. Clu's thumb shifted over the inside of Tron's wrist, and he frowned. It seemed as though something was off, just slightly. 

"Clu?" Tron asked quietly. "Are you all right?"   
  
Clu blinked and let go of Tron's arm, nodding as he did so. He silently made a mental note, though, to ask Flynn what programs lacked on the insides of their wrists. 

* * *

 "On the – oh, you mean a pulse point?" Flynn said, when Clu had captured his attention long enough. "It means there's a vein there. That's what Users have instead of circuits, only those are under our skin instead on top of it." 

Clu eyed Flynn's clothing, decorated with bright lines, skeptically. Flynn caught the look and pulled back his sleeve as much as he could to show that they were  _only_  on his clothing, and not etched into his skin.   
  
Flynn moved on to some other topic, but Clu remained fascinated with pulses, and the circuits-under-skin that Flynn had described. Did they glow? Was a User's skin opaque enough to obscure that glow, then? It probably wasn't thick enough, at least not from what Clu had seen.   
  
It confused Clu, back then, how oddly... exciting... he found the idea of that to be. To think of delicately punching through a thin membrane to find that thrumming beat behind it, to see what was there and feel it against his own circuits sounded....   
  
"Clu? Hello? Earth to Clu!" Flynn waved a hand in Clu's face and Clu cleared his throat, hoping wildly that Flynn had no idea what his brightened circuits meant. 

* * *

 A few cycles later, Clu got the chance to satisfy his curiosity. The city was still under construction, still very much an outline against the horizon, and the rest of the landscape was treacherous. More than once, Clu or occasionally Tron had derezzed a lightcycle in an unplanned encounter with a rock formation, but Flynn, with his User powers, hadn't really been a victim of that - until now. 

Clu derezzed his own lightcycle a bit more smoothly and ran over to Flynn, expecting to see him losing pixels and possibly missing some body parts - nothing a few minutes of coding couldn't fix. What he found, though, was Flynn, lying on his back, grunting in pain, and holding his hand strangely against the shoulder nearest Clu.   
  
"Are you all right?" Clu asked, checking Flynn over visually. He couldn't be sure without a diagnostic, but the User didn't  _appear_  to be hurt. He certainly wasn't showing any raw code, or flashing any warnings. Why would Flynn fake it, though?   
  
The User in question grimaced and moved his hand. Almost immediately, red liquid began welling up from where it had been, filling a cut that had been hidden and beginning to spill down Flynn's chest. Flynn glanced at it, studied it, then shifted his weight so that his good arm was supporting him and tentatively moved his hurt arm. Some of the red liquid seeped down his arm and dripped onto the Grid floor, but Flynn ignored it.   
  
Clu dropped to his knees beside his User. "What's wrong? What is that?"   
  
Flynn, after determining that he could use his arm mostly normally, sat up the rest of the way and took out his disc to make repairs. "It's blood," he said absently. "User juice. It's what we have instead of circuits, that you were asking about a few weeks ago. A-ha...." He'd said that more to his disc than to Clu, having found the section of code that corresponded to his hurt shoulder.   
  
"Is it bad?" Clu asked, leaning closer. So that was what was inside of a User's veins. It was enticing, and Clu no longer found the fascination strange. Why should he? He knew about it, and it wasn't going away.   
  
"Inside me?" Flynn said absently, responding to Clu's question rather than the program's internal monologue. "No. It lets my body run. Sort of. It's... yeah, I can't think of a good analogy. Anyway, on the ground in the middle of the Grid? Yes, it is bad. Also, that cut hurts, so don't touch it," Flynn added, warding off both Clu's curiosity and his reaching hand.   
  
Clu, after a pause, instead touched the drops of... blood that were still steadily splattering on the ground from Flynn's elbow. The substance felt remarkably like the energy found on the Grid, but perhaps that wasn't quite right. That liquid gave off a faint spark when it was touched, and this blood didn't really do anything of the sort. It was faintly sticky, and starkly red on the neon-black Grid, a color that Clu knew about but had never seen before.   
  
"I think I know how to fix this," Flynn said eventually, looking up from his disc. "No, wait, don't-"  _-eat it,_  he was about to say, but Clu'd already stuck his fingers in his mouth.   
  
It didn't translate. That was the first thing that struck Clu, when he tasted his User's blood. The liquid didn't transform itself into code able to infuse itself into his own when he interacted with it.   
  
The second was how  _intense_  the taste was. Or that it had taste at all, really. On the Grid, the only thing that had flavor was either an energy spring or another program, and Clu hadn't really gotten the chance to learn the second firsthand; he'd had to ask Tron. Even an energy spring was muted. Programs didn't need their mouths to take in energy; even if they never swallowed anything, they'd soak up energy from their surroundings.   
  
But  _this._  This felt like Clu imagined licking another program's circuits to be. This was the copper edge of a disc in his mouth, to his throat, the bright press of circuits in dark corners. Clu half-shut his eyes to focus on the pure  _sensation_  of the blood. He decided then and there that nothing this delicious could possibly be a bad idea.   
  
Then he took his fingers out of his mouth, opened his eyes, and saw Flynn staring at him like he'd just turned into a gridbug. Apparently Users didn't do this. Half-hysterically, Clu wondered why not; he felt almost drunk off it, or what he imagined drunk to be like. Although he supposed it hurt Users to get the blood out of them, so it probably wasn't something that happened too often.   
  
Flynn opened and shut his mouth a few times, and tried to make some sounds in between. It didn't work, but he didn't move, so Clu leaned closer and licked at the trail of blood along Flynn's arm, up to the wound on his shoulder.   
  
When he reached the gash, half-healed from Flynn's coding, he stopped just before licking it, and regarded it curiously. The flow of blood had turned more sluggish, now, but there was enough to let Clu gently touch it, and the wound, to the circuits on the back of his hand.   
  
Flynn drew in a shocked breath and tensed, but Clu only half-sensed it, lost as he was in his own unfocused world. Users, and he'd thought  _tasting_  this stuff felt good. He shivered and closed his eyes all the way, reveling in the feel of Flynn's blood under his hand.   
  
"I - stop," Flynn said abruptly. His voice was rough, and Clu, blinking slowly at him, could only imagine it was for the same reason that Clu needed a billicycle to process the directive. He moved his hand away disappointedly, telling himself that if a User said stop, he stopped, no matter how much he craved that feeling/taste/sense right now.   
  
"Why?"   
  
Flynn hurriedly fixed the rest of his code and replaced his disc, standing up and moving away from Clu quickly. Clu was left kneeling on the Outlands floor, fingers and mouth smeared with red. "Because," Flynn said. "It's - you shouldn't do that. It's creepy. It's blood, man, blood doesn't - make people do that." He gestured haphazardly at Clu's brightened and purple-tinged circuits.   
  
"Doesn't feel good, you mean?" Clu asked, standing as well and walking nearer to where Flynn was coding a new lightcycle. He stayed several feet away, though, sensing that Flynn didn't want him any nearer. The program's voice was remarkably steadier than his User's. "Why not?"   
  
"Because... because it doesn't," Flynn muttered distractedly. "Because it's fucked up, man."   
  
The last sentence was utter gibberish to Clu, who ignored it. He'd ask some other time. "Users don't do that?"   
  
"No," Flynn said firmly. "We don't. Sex isn't like that, it shouldn't hurt for either person."   
  
"Oh." Clu fell silent, then, thinking and reconciling this information from his User with his own conclusions and the answers to a few subtle questions posed to Tron. It wasn't until Flynn had finished coding the lightcycle that he spoke again. "Flynn?"   
  
"Yeah?"   
  
"What's sex?"   
  
The look on Flynn's face was something Clu could only describe as a crashed processor. The User looked that way for long enough that Clu started to worry he might need to be rebooted. Then Flynn blinked at him, croaked out, "Uh... ask Tron," and refused say any more on the subject. 

* * *

 It took a long time for Clu to realize that maybe his User didn't have all the answers. He'd wondered it before - for instance, his attempt to ask Tron what sex was had boiled down to Tron taking the half-millicycle off and just showing him - but it had taken quite a while for the realization to actually hit him. It had snuck up on him, almost, showing him a memory here or a decision there in a new light than the one he had originally seen it with. 

Specifically, a golden light, rather than blue.   
  
He always craved the taste of blood, after that millicycle Flynn had crashed his lightcycle. It wasn't as though he would kill Flynn, or rip him apart to get at it. That would destroy it, make it a thing of horror instead of vitality and fluid grace. But Flynn was very careful around a combination of sharp edges and Clu, and made sure to quickly heal himself in the event he was cut.   
  
Clu always thought it rather disappointing; at the time, though, he'd supposed it was all right, because a User had said it was wrong, and was protecting both Clu and himself from that wrongness. Now, Clu thought maybe he was just scared.   
  
Scared. Clu could make a User  _scared._  The thought was a heady one, and for a microcycle Clu let himself imagine what would happen if he took advantage of that fear and satisfied his own craving.   
  
When he opened his eyes reluctantly, his circuits were both significantly brighter, and a blood-deep, bone-deep gold. 

* * *

 It was when Sam entered the Grid, and was subsequently captured, that Clu got his chance to act out that fantasy. Pretending to be Flynn for a microcycle was entertaining, and Clu almost kept up the charade, just to see the boy's face when he became convinced it was his father doing all of these things. 

He let it go, though. It wouldn't have served any purpose, and he needed Sam mentally whole enough to play in the Games, or at least survive long enough to provide a captivating deresolution for the audience. Physically, though....   
  
Physically was a whole different story. Clu could do almost anything to Sam's body and it could be fix with a few taps of code, short of derezzing him.   
  
And he was a User. He had  _blood._    
  
"I'm not your father, Sam," Clu said, concealing his thoughts behind a smug expression. He let his eyes trail up and down Sam's body appreciatively. "But I am  _very_  happy to see you."   
  
Sam jerked away in disgust, although Clu didn't pause to read the emotion on his face very closely. Instead, he turned to press against a spot on the wall that would trap Sam's wrists and ankles in a force field that only Clu could adjust. He knew it because it was something Flynn had helped him code and test, albeit... repurposed the slightest bit.   
  
At Clu's gesture, the programs in the room turned and filed out, and both the windows and doors turned opaque and impassable. It was standard procedure for when Clu had to torture a program - in general, the image of "benevolent dictator" was not one that blended well with "ruthless, merciless sadist." It also ensured that Clu would not be interrupted.   
  
Clu waited a few billicycles, ignoring Sam's glare, before taking a knife out of a holster on the wall. It was actually the blade from a beam katana, repurposed in its shape and the length of its handle, but the word "knife" was what Flynn had called it, and Clu supposed it was as good as any. The blade glowed gently orange when Clu grasped the hilt.   
  
"You're just gonna kill me, then?" Sam spat. He tried to spread his arm out to his sides, but the force field held him in place. He swore. "Fine. Get it over with then, coward."   
  
In a flash the knife was at Sam's throat. "You would do well to remind who is being held prisoner here," Clu said mildly. "And who therefore has no license to be insulting."   
  
Sam glared, but he swallowed against the blade at his throat and said nothing. Clu smiled, showing teeth. "Good." He stepped back and moved Sam's arm and legs with a few flicks of the knife, so that the User was stretched out in a slightly squished X.   
  
"Now, I'm not going to kill you, Sammy. That would be boring, and you are ever... so...  _fascinating_." He lingered on the words intentionally, walking around Sam so that the last word was whispered in Sam's ear.   
  
Sam tried to jerk away from Clu again, but came up short against his restraints. Clu trailed the knife lightly across the line of Sam's shoulders and watched his back tense in fear and revulsion. "What are you doing?" Sam hissed. Clu thought it was meant to sound defiant and heroic, but the question just sounded pathetic. Like a whiny child.   
  
Clu debated whether answering would make this more or less enjoyable as he continued tracing the knife lightly over Sam's circuits and muscles. Sam decided it for him, saying, "Whatever it is, it's not going to work!"   
  
Clu laughed, soft and low. "Oh, Sammy, it's going to work. Your own body will ensure that. Whether or not it leaves scars is... entirely up to you." Of course, it wouldn't leave physical scars no matter how much Sam struggled, and it would probably leave mental scars no matter how much Sam  _didn't_ , but Sam himself didn't have to know that. Sometimes a little ambiguity was for the best. And it might be fun to let poor Sammy think he had a choice.   
  
Sam tried to twist around to see Clu. "What do you mean it's - nh!" Clu had sliced a thin line across the circuit he was currently tracing, and Sam had clenched his teeth to keep from crying out. Well, that was something Clu would have to work on fixing.   
  
"If you don't move, this will be easier," Clu told Sam. "Eyes front."   
  
Sam seethed but did as he was told, aware that Clu was still holding a knife to his back. Clu silently traced the circuit he'd cut on Sam's shoulder blade with the knife and then with his fingers. He had to suppress a groan at the sheer feel of Sam's blood on his fingertips. That would have shattered the hold he had over Sam's actions. Clu couldn't, however, stop himself from swiftly leaning down and closing his mouth over part of the wound.   
  
This time he did moan, and almost missed Sam's cry of shock threaded with horror. Clu reluctantly straightened up, not touching his mouth. This wouldn't be effective if all he did was suck blood from Sam's back like some sort of gridbug.   
  
He considered the knife for a billicycle, then decided he'd rather have the finer motor control of the Sirens' cutting tools. He set the knife aside, then snapped his fingers, rezzing one - he still hadn't figured out how the Sirens managed to do that without a signal - and set the blade to just deep and sharp enough that it would slice through Sam's armor and skin without catching.   
  
Clu slid his hand along the line of Sam's already-cut circuit, ducking under his prisoner's arm to face him again. The wound, after a second, seeped into the now-open circuit, staining Sam a sentry red. A new kind of rectification. Change the color and not the mind. The mind could be changed much more intricately, given time.   
  
Sam hissed at the pain, but refused to give Clu the satisfaction of a scream, or even a yelp. Clu cut down his other circuit more swiftly - the symmetry was pleasing - and was rewarded with a stifled grunt of pain. He stepped closer, set the finger-blade to a shallower depth. "Oh, Sam," he murmured into the User's neck. He flicked out his tongue to taste the droplets of blood as they began to soak Sam's armor. "You taste  _exquisite_."   
  
Sam shuddered and shrank away, but with both of them positioned like they were, all he managed was to crowd closer to Clu. Clu smiled and dropped his voice into a deep purr. "Hush, Sam. It'll make it easier on both of us if you don't try to escape." It would also be extremely boring, but what Sam needed was a little reverse psychology. "After all, the quicker you break, the quicker this will be over."   
  
Sam turned his head and spat in Clu's face.   
  
Clu stepped back and turned away from Sam, wiping the spit off. He was trying to school his expression into one of contempt and derision, but it was hard when his excitement kept leaking through and making him grin. In the end he compromised and settled for a sleepy, glazed, _dangerous_  smile. "Sam, Sam, Sam," he chided, turning back to the bound User. "You  _really_  shouldn't have done that."   
  
Sam watched him half-defiantly and half-warily. He was still seeping blood, and the liquid had run down his torso and legs to stain the floor below. Clu let his gaze rake the other's body again, much more slashingly that he had before. The cold veneer was back in place, and Clu could feel himself calculating the best way to make Sam break without completely ruining him for combat.   
  
Well. Ruining him permanently. Temporarily ruining him was all right.   
  
What was the thing Sam was holding onto to get him through this?   
  
His pride. Stupid mistake. Should've picked something stronger. But he couldn't go back now.   
  
What was the best way to destroy that pride?   
  
Make him want it. Make him beg.   
  
 _Easy._    
  
Clu took one step forward and slashed his hand across both of Sam's forearms and the tops of his legs, then grabbed the User's chin roughly. Sam choked on a cry of pain; every time he moved in one direction, the cuts on his opposite side would be aggravated. Clu very carefully trailed the blade across Sam's cheek along the line of bone, leaving a delicate thread of blood accentuating Sam's death glare. Clu cocked his head, then added a cut to the other side of Sam's face. Much better.   
  
Clu had been carefully keeping his circuits away from Sam's blood for two reasons. One, he was actually trying to keep some semblance of control together, and two, he had wanted to break Sam without that, and let him have the shock of pleasure as a reward. He had a better idea now.   
  
Clu licked the cut on Sam's cheek deceptively gently. Sam stiffened, but didn't move away. Either he was learning or he was more frightened of the finger-blade at his back than of Clu himself.   
  
Dumb mistake.   
  
Clu kissed Sam viciously, taking advantage of the User's shock to shove his tongue into Sam's mouth and let him taste his own blood. At the same time, Clu pressed up against Sam, circuit to vein, deep blood-bone-red.   
  
Sam writhed and bucked in Clu's hold, slicing open his back until Clu's hand was slick with blood. At some point, Sam's attempts to get away started turning into attempts to get closer, and at that turning point, Clu separated them entirely, stepping back a few feet. Sam whined in his throat and strained forward until he caught himself and gave Clu a look of utter, helpless fury. Fury that recognized it was fighting a losing battle, Clu noted.   
  
Clu just smirked and acted like there was nothing more interesting in the world than the blood on his hand. He lifted his fingers up to eye level and turned them this way and that, admiring the sheen and the heaviness of the drop of blood that seemed always just about to fall. The fact that he was using the pause to recover from the rush of pleasure that move had produced in his own body was entirely irrelevant. Out of the corner of his eye, he made sure Sam was watching, too. He was. Avidly. The User swallowed a few times, no doubt wondering why he couldn't look away.   
  
Clu looked up at him lazily and wet his lips. He touched the tip of his index finger with his thumb to derezz the blade, then slowly touched his fingers to his lips.   
  
Sam, still staring, made a struggling sound, sick comprehension warring with willful oblivion in his eyes. Clu grinned, knowing his teeth were copper with blood, and strolled around behind Sam again, picking up the knife as he passed it. Sam didn't try to keep him in view. Oh, good. He  _was_  learning.   
  
Clu eyed Sam's back and decided he ought to continue down the circuit he'd started cutting before. The knife had a different balance, a different feel to it. The finger-blade sliced easily through almost anything it touched, but the knife's sharpness depending on how much pressure was applied. The former was easier to wield, but the latter gave cutting a certain... finesse that Clu enjoyed. As if the blade were a separate program he could feel singing under his hand. It wanted to taste blood as much as he did.   
  
Clu placed a hand on the back of the blade as he cut down Sam's back, feeling drops well up beneath his fingertips. Lightly, he let the circuits on his hand trail in the path of blood, and Sam shivered and let out a half-moan, half-sob.   
  
"Now, Sam," Clu said, using the name as an attention-getter. "This can go one of two ways: the easy way or the hard way." He walked back around so that he could see Sam's face as he talked. Idly, he flicked the knife just barely over Sam's skin: not quite touching, but close enough that Sam flinched from the blade every time. "Right now, we're doing things the hard way. I do what I want and what you want is irrelevant. You don't have anything I need, so your only value to me is in this." Untrue, but it made for a better monologue. "Depending on what you do, this might end up going the easy way. I clean you up, I heal you, I let you go back into the Games, and sooner or later your father or his pet Iso will show up to whisk you away. And all for the low, low price of a sincere plea."   
  
Sam snarled at him, which Clu pretended to ignore, except to add in sharp shocks of pleasure when Sam flinched away from the knife. Just sharp enough to make him flinch towards it instead. With any luck, he'd cut himself.   
  
"And then there's the other way," Clu continued casually, as if he had no idea what he was doing to Sam. "The  _very_  hard way. Which is what will happen if you continue to defy me. I do  _whatever_  I want with you, and the state you're in at the end of it is no concern of mine. Either way, I get a sincere plea from you, but this way, all the begging you do won't change a thing. What'll it be, kiddo?"   
  
Sam dragged himself up from where he'd slumped in the force fields' holds on him. He looked Clu dead in the eye and said, very distinctly and betraying not a hint of the blood that still stained his mouth, "Fuck. You."   
  
Clu purred, a purr that trailed off into a growl. Oh,  _good_. The very hard way was always so much more fun. Interesting how blue programs usually picked that one.   
  
Clu lifted the knife up and waved it slowly back and forth in Sam's field of vision. Sam's eyes followed it almost dutifully, and they kept following it when Clu darted forward and opened a cut on Sam's arm, pressing his circuits to Sam's on the opposite side at the same time, so Sam's brain would register both at once.   
  
Sam made a sound that, in another world, might have been a groan or cry of frustration. Didn't matter. The User could die for all Clu cared; Flynn would probably show up anyway. The blood was slipping, flowing, down the lines of Sam's circuits, both whole and cut. Clu opened nicks and short cuts on Sam's body, combining them ruthlessly with touches of his circuits to Sam's open wounds.   
  
Sam's breathing grew irregular, hitching every time something touched him, until Clu thought he was losing the distinction between pleasure and pain. When Clu closed his teeth over Sam's neck, scraping against his jugular, Sam  _whimpered_  and his muscles trembled on the brink of collapsing. Then he whispered something, raw and not quite broken, so quietly that Clu almost didn't hear what it was.   
  
"Please...."   
  
"What was that, Sam?" Clu asked cheerfully. "I'm afraid you'll have to speak up." He trailed the knife around the indents in Sam's skin his teeth had made. Sam practically vibrated with tension, torn in two different directions.   
  
The User drew in a ragged breath. "Please," he repeated, voice cracking and eyes downcast. It clearly cost him a lot to do this. "Please let me go."   
  
Clu studied him, tapping his chin with the tip of the knife. "Mm... no." Sam's head shot up at the flat refusal. "Remember, Sam? We're doing this the hard way. The  _very_  hard way. You're not being released until  _I_  say so." Sam stared at him in wide-eyed, dawning horror. Clu pretended to consider the User, walking around him again and looking him up and down like he was a beast of burden. "However...."   
  
Sam twisted around to see him until Clu tapped the side of his head with the flat of the blade. "You've been more cooperative than I would have expected. I honestly thought we'd be doing this for a lot longer before you asked politely." And he had. Sam had dropped his pride fairly quickly, considering whose son he was. Perhaps Clu should have continued pretending to be Flynn...?   
  
But he hadn't, and it was no use speculating in front of a prisoner. A little suspenseful silence was fine, but only if Clu was actually creating it on purpose.   
  
"So, Sammy, I think I'll reward you. Not let you go, no, but I think I'll let you overload."   
  
Blank look. Oh, right. Users called it something else. They did something else to get there, too, and Clu couldn't remember what either thing was to save his code. Well, damn. Maybe this wouldn't work after all. Not that Clu was particularly concerned about whether he kept his word to Sam, but there was a certain personality one had to give the impression of to one's captives, and Clu liked being a consistent sort of dictator.   
  
Hmm. Actions spoke louder than words, right? Clu exhaled shortly and walked forward to where Sam hung, swaying slightly, from the force fields. He set the knife aside again - Clu had no idea how much blood Users could lose before their bodies stopped working, but a lot of what had been in Sam was now on the floor - and trailed one of his exposed circuits across a slash on Sam's chest.   
  
Sam's breath, flavored with the sound of his weariness courtesy of his vocal cords, stuttered into a moan, and he unconsciously leaned towards Clu when the other broke off the touch. Clu stepped closer, until Sam could touch Clu if the former strained.   
  
Sam clenched his teeth and resolutely did not move. Ah,  _there_  was the Son of Flynn that Clu had been slicing up. He hadn't disappeared after all.   
  
But it amused Clu bring the User to overload, or whatever the User equivalent was, and besides which, he was getting a little impatient, too. Clu moved closer, close enough that static from his circuits was arcing towards Sam's blood, giving him a jolt of pleasure every time it connected. Now that Clu was letting himself feel it, instead of focusing solely on what he was doing to Sam, the electricity felt marvelous, especially this way, in an erratic heartbeat of his own.   
  
Sam made a sound that didn't know whether it wanted to be a moan or a noise of disgust, and his muscles likewise juddered, his body's instincts warring with his mind. Clu took the decision out of his hands by sealing the space between them, slick with blood and sharp with ozone.   
  
Sam's body made the next move for him, Clu was sure. There was no way the glaring, hostile young man of approximately forty microcycles ago made the conscious decision to buck his hips forward so Clu would slip one of his legs in between Sam's, nor was it the same defiant User who ground into Clu's circuits in a desperate attempt for nothing more than contact and pleasure.   
  
Clu glanced at Sam's face and saw his eyes tightly shut. He supposed Sam was pretending something else was going on, although the fact that he was cut into ribbons and was being pleasured via electrical shocks through said wounds may have made it a bit harder. Clu didn't really mind; it felt rapturous to the program himself, and if Sam wanted to pretend it was something else, that was fine by him.   
  
But he wasn't about to let Sam forget  _why_  this felt so good. Clu dipped his head down to paint his lips with Sam's blood, and stole a frission of it on his tongue. He could feel himself getting close to overloading, and while he had no idea whether Sam was, he wouldn't be able to do anything about it soon enough.   
  
Clu twisted his fingers in Sam's hair, turning his head and pulling Sam into a bloody, messy kiss. Sam's eyes flew open in his surprise, and he bit Clu's lip, just hard enough to send Clu into overload.   
  
Vaguely Clu was aware of Sam crying out and then quickly stifling the sound, which he assumed meant Sam had overloaded. Clu couldn't feel any electricity from him, but Users didn't have circuits. They probably didn't overload the normal way, either.   
  
When Clu regained the use of his processor, he calmly unhooked Sam's disc and repaired his code. There was a bit of trial and error, since Clu wasn't familiar with the coding on a User, but it wasn't anything too bad. Clu synced Sam's disc and watched his wounds disappear and his armor knit before walking to the wall and keying open the doors and windows.   
  
"That's it?" Sam asked dully, as programs began making their way back in. None commented on either the puddle of blood on the floor or the smell of ozone in the air; every single one of them knew better. The ones that didn't... well, those tended to learn quickly or not at all.   
  
"What is?" Clu asked. He handed the knife, recoded to be clean, to someone to put back on the wall.   
  
Sam struggled for words. "That. What you did. No long-winded explanation of your plans? No attempts to lure me to the dark side so I can 'take revenge on Dad for leaving' or something dumb like that?"   
  
Clu frowned. "No. Why would I do that?" He touched the spot on the wall, and Sam, not expecting the force fields to release, fell almost to the floor before staggering to catch himself. As Sam was rubbing his wrists indignantly, Clu added, "You're much more useful to me as bait."

* * *

 The last thing Clu remembers is a pulse. 

Not his own, of course. Never his own. Only the fascination is Clu's, not the object itself. The pulse is Flynn's, again. Still. Always a User's.   
  
Clu can feel the reintegration tearing at him, sinking claws of golden blood into him, shards of red bone. It hurts, and for a moment, he thinks he can break free. Then he feels the turning point, the tipping point, and he remembers being oddly calm about it.   
  
He turns to face Flynn, in the end. He will meet his deresolution head-on.   
  
And he feels that pulse envelope him, consume him in the way that Clu had craved for it to do. He wants it, so badly, and he has nothing left, to keep or lose, so he tears at it as it shreds into him, tying it to his unraveling code and his sand-in-an-hourglass will.   
  
Clu takes the pulse with him into the dark, and for one instant, he is a User and a basic and he has blood and he does not and a pulse thrums under his fingers and under his skin.   
  
And the instant is gone, and the darkness is bright fire, and Clu lets it shatter his code and boil his User's blood, because he is, at least, at last, free.


End file.
